Freyalyn's Thoughts

Great panic and disturbance this morning.  I'd done quite a bit of dyeing last night, and had left two pots full of 500g each yarn cooling down on the cooker this morning.  So before I left for work I though I'd put heat under them for ten minutes or so, just to exhaust as they cooled down during the day.  I left the kitchen for a few minutes.

Coming back, the covering towel was alight, as was the newspaper covering the surface next to the hob and the board I was using as a splashback.  Lots of smoke and flame.  Eeek!  So I dumped the flaming stuff in the sink, doused it with water, opened all windows front and back, upstairs and down, then carried the wet smokey stuff out to the bin.  The pups thought it was very exciting.  The cat had vanished.

A few minutes later I looked out of the kitchen window and the bin was aflame!  Very aflame!  Even more eek!  I rushed out - stopping to put shoes on this time - pulled the bin away from the other bin and the dry leaves it was sitting in, and moved the car forward.  This was very scary, as the bin was really flaming, dripping melted and burning plastic, and I only just got there in time to have something to pull it out by.  I then rang the fire brigade as this was well past being funny.

They were here it about ten minutes, lights flashing but no sirens, and it took four large men fully suited and helmeted, to extinguish the bin.  It was smouldering for ages and took lots of water and (presumably) CO2.

Obviously the towel wasn't completely out when I dumped it.  But I have no idea what burned like that - there is several other people's rubbish in our bin this week, so did someone put oil or some other flammable in?  Whatever, it's now in a damp mess spread all over our car parking space, along with cat litter, the old loo-seat, and lots of burst bags of rubbish.  Ick.

I was late for work, and when I get home everyone will be shivering because all the windows are wide open - and it's still very icy even if yesterday's snow is now melting.

My mind is obviously going - I think the towel smouldered in the first place because I turned on the wrong ring.  I just hate having an electric hob.

Anyway, last night's dyeing went well.

This kid mohair dyes up beautifully, and the sheen is lovely.  Must do some for myself some time.


This is the shorter stapled bouncy wool, which spins into a beautiful fat yarn.  Imperial on the right, of course, and the left is one I've called Blue Wine.  It was a mistake when I was working out a recipe for a colour I've called Mulled Wine, which I parcelled off last night as a part of a large Christmas present order for a spinner down South.  She bought lots about this time last year to give as presents to other spinners and knitters, and has kindly done so again this year.  I'd like to have one of the packages I've done for her - 300g of wool and either 100g kid mohair or 50g camel/silk, all in the same colourway.

And of course I now have the fun of ringing the Council and getting them to supply a new bin.  Plus asking for a bin for the tenant downstairs who uses ours (and it's usually too full now).  I wonder if I can get a lockable one to stop people using it on the way home from the pub?

Need to go home.  Everything will be smoky.  And cold.  Still, better than the alternative.

I seem to have been constantly on the go this weekend.  Off to see 'Hellboy 3' with Mark on Saturday evening - yep, this is what a action/fantasy sequel should be.  Fun, scary in bits, light touch with the humour, actors having fun instead of going through the motions.  I especially had fun during the early scene in the auction house for archaeological treasures - I recognised most, including a huge version of the Venus of Willendorf (in reality a few inches high), and the Welsh gold cape from Mold.  I'm sure I'd recognise the other pieces on repeat viewings.  And yes, I was completely with Prince Nuada's viewpoint - though I was disappointed to see both his hands were resolutely non-silver.

The Cassandra cardigan came to the cinema with me and five or six inches were added to the back.  It was also trawled around with us on Sunday, when we visited Harlow Carr (where many photos were taken and a very decadent but extremely nice breakfast was munched at Betty's.  We then went to Braythorne Bees' Open Day - much excitement when I spotted a red kite in the field on the way, and after we'd stopped and I'd fumbled the camera out we realised there were five!!  Mobbing a gang of crows in a field next to the road.  Apparently they all still live at Harewood but spread out over the surrounding countryside during the day.  The pups came out and had tea and cheesecake with us at the farm - I sat knitting in the sun too long and burnt slightly.  Bil was addressed as a "splendid personage" which rather made his day.
 
There's quite a decent amount of resolution on the kite in the field if you zoom in on my Flickr page.

I've photographed these spirals before, but I just love the shape they make, and the climbers that wreath them.

A fish in a dry bed.


This sage plant is obviously not healthy, but aren't the colours fantastic.  The purple, orange/gold shades, shadowy greens.


And more colours:

And these aren't even the autumn colours yet.  Harlow Carr was crawling with miniature pirates and their long suffering parents, but we managed to ignore them.  the poor staff had been instructed to dress up too - they didn't really look impressed.

We whizzed into Tesco on the way back from the movies on Saturday, and invested in some more DVDs.  I finally got a copy of 'Ice Cold in Alex' which is one of my favourite oldies.  And I picked up 'Stardust' which has been strongly recommended to me on more than one occasion.  Now I greatly regret not seeing this on the big screen - it was such fun, and so nice to look at.  I started watching it about 10.30 last night, which wasn't a good idea.  However, vast amounts of knitting were done both during that movie and earlier in the day while the dye pots were bubbling away:

Wisteria is growing rapidly - one sleeve was finished about 1.30 this morning.  And it still looks yellow in the photographs!

Must remember to get a photo of Ma in this blog.  We had a rather yummy roast belly pork dinner up there on Sunday evening (imagine us all singing along to the Mamma Mia soundtrack in the garden while glugging our pre-prandial drinks!) and it was noted that everyone gets pictured here but Ma.  Whooops!

This is my next spinning project.  It's a small fraction of the Cotswold/Charolais/Wensledale fleece from a sheep called Gloria I bought at Wonderwool, dyed in two blues, two reds and a bright yellow with Lanaset dyes.

I then spent an hour or two yesterday afternoon, in between trying to unsuccessfully dye a skein of what I thought was a nice singles yarn a brilliant crimson with gold spot, stuffing it through the carder.  This is the first stage, the original colours into batts, with a small amount of multi-coloured glitter fibre:

Then into the seconday colours:

And then those split down into tertiary colours:

Not only is it much more fun to blend colours this way rather than dye them, because it's an optical blend the colours seem much brighter and livelier.

I then broke the colours down further, trying to make sure there were no apparent 'jumps' where the colour sequence did not blend smoothly one into another.  You can see the sparkle quite clearly in the darker colours.

And finally I adjusted the size of each colour ball, so that there was no more of one colour area than another.  Ideally now this should just spin into a perfect spectrum with no jags.

I have various ideas for what this will become.  I shall make a rectangular shawl/stole rather than a triangle, because I don't want any colour  bands to be deeper than the others.  I want to point out the Norse influence of the name, but somehow in lace, as of this will be my project in the Seasons of Lace summer challenge.  Of course, I have to spin it first, but as I'm planning to spin a fingering/4ply thickness single at speed, I hope it shouldn't take me that long.  I have a small skein of the fleece that I did as a sample - it makes a very airy single with a surprising halo.  I'm hoping (having not sampled as much as I should) that the glitter will be emphasized by this too.

I don't think much dyeing will be happening this afternoon.  I have to make a mutton curry for dinner tomorrow (it was supposed to be for tonight but Mark got two bacon chops out the freezer instead of rashers of bacon so they're tonight's tea), a cake for Pa as it's Father's Day on Sunday, and we're out of bread again.  I do try not to combine food preparation and dyeing, as I don't believe poisonous substances make good seasoning.  I'm planning to go to the Hebden Bridge gather for Knitting in Public Day, which unfortunately will mean I miss my Midsummer Smial Moot, but notice was only given for the latter on Thursday. 

The Modular Vest to Match Buttons is growing fairly quickly.